


Alastor Moody and the Norwegian Incident

by tinyporcelainehorses



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Aurors, Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, One Shot, Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter), References to Norse Religion & Lore, young "mad-eye" moody
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:14:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26127100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinyporcelainehorses/pseuds/tinyporcelainehorses
Summary: An extract from Sturgis Podmore’s "The Order of the Phoenix, Twenty Years On: Remembering Fallen Friends", concerning THAT rumour about Alastor Moody, his missing eye, and that fateful trip to Norway - and whether or not it is true.Written for the Spice Up The Archive challenge on HPfanfictalk.com.
Relationships: Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody & Sturgis Podmore
Kudos: 8





	Alastor Moody and the Norwegian Incident

**Author's Note:**

> Hawksquill and I were discussing a challenge prompt of 'retelling myth', and she threw out the concept of 'what if Mad Eye Moody was Odin?" I decided to pick it up and run with it.
> 
> Content warning: some very vaguely implied self harm.

**An extract from Sturgis Podmore’s _The Order of the Phoenix, Twenty Years On: Remembering Fallen Friends,_ published by Thunderquill Books, 2018. From Chapter Nine, Alastor Moody:**

It would be impossible, of course, to write about Alastor – and to his close friends, he was always ‘Alastor’, and never ‘Mad Eye’ – without addressing the rumour. It is a long-established rumour, which may well have grown in the telling and re-telling of it. It has even appeared in print several times in the last few years of Moody’s life, most notably a highly sensationalized retelling in the infamous Rita Skeeter’s Daily Prophet profile of Moody during his ill-fated year teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts.

The rumour I refer to is, of course, the story of Moody’s daring break-in to the Norwegian ministry of magic. I have various disclaimers about the veracity of this story, but, for the sake of a good yarn, I will tell it first, and raise my reservations later.

In the years between the defeat of Grindelwald and the first rise of Voldemort, there were calls for the auror office to be disbanded. Dark wizards, it was reasoned, were a thing of the past: we were enjoying a long period of peace and prosperity. Much of that can be credited to the hard work of Alastor and his colleagues in the auror’s office, tracking down and dealing with dark wizards before they had the chance to become much of a problem. They also worked in a considerable amount of secrecy, which has allowed this narrative (among others) to flourish. Nonetheless, despite the hard work he was doing, Moody was young, and far from the towering figure and skilled combatant he would become in his later days.

One particular dark wizard – and who it was changes in the telling of this story, but I have heard both Elias Thimblewaite and Octavia Cuttle as the most common candidates – was proving trickier to catch. He or she had evaded capture several times, had tortured Muggles, had even – in some versions of this story – proved the untimely end of Alastor’s mentor, Tobias Thawne. Nothing Alastor tried was working: his auror training was falling short. So, it is said, he took a trip out of the country and let his nemesis believe that they had won, that he was fleeing. Alastor was of course doing nothing of the sort. He took a portkey to Norway, and to their ministry of magic, buried deep within the fjords. It is there that he broke _in_ to the most secret parts of the ministry: the Hemmelighetsbyrå, the Norwegian equivalent of our own Department of Mysteries. Using his considerable skill as a magical combatant, he managed to evade the guards and workers there, and made his way through the building to the many caves below, where he found Yggdrasil, the enormous ash growing deep beneath the earth, known to the ancients as the world tree.

Those who have studied their ancient runes, who are aware of the history of magic through Europe, will know that it is there that the first runes were created, and there that the Norse believed all magic flowed from. They will have heard the stories of the pagan God Odin, who plucked out his own eye and cast it into the well at the foot of the tree, who hung himself from the boughs of the tree for nine whole days to gain magical knowledge and secrets. Alastor, it seems, had heard those stories too. He came to Norway with both eyes. He left with just one. He spent a night pinned to the long branches of Yggdrasil, its roots stained with his blood, screaming as ancient magical secrets poured into his brain.

When he returned from Norway, he found his elusive nemesis in a day. There was one single, short duel: within moments, his sworn enemy lay defeated at his feet, never to reach Azkaban. Ever since that day, it is said that Moody was a far greater and more powerful wizard, an imposing duelist, a terrifying force of nature in fighting the dark forces. But ancient eldritch secrets do not do good things to the psyche of mortals, they say, and that is where Moody’s paranoia came from. Others of a more mystical persuasion say that Moody’s resultant paranoia came from the fact he did not stay on the tree _long enough_ , that it was a punishment for not staying the whole nine days.

I have told the story. Now to the most pressing question: is it true? Well, Alastor has been dead since the summer of 1997, so it seems we will never get a thorough answer. The Norwegian ministry has thoroughly denied the existence of Yggdrasil in the Hemmelighetsbyrå for generations. But since Minister Granger’s declassification of many of the contents of our own Department of Mysteries, such a magical object existing, deep beneath the mountains of Norway, does not seem too unlikely. I had the good fortune to be able to ask Alastor himself about this story, back during the first wizarding war: he had no interest in talking about it and shut me down quite brusquely, which can of course be understood as either confirmation or denial, depending on your inclination. I myself cannot quite bring myself to believe this tale. The details have changed so much in the telling, and there are so many versions of it circulating now that its veracity seems questionable at best. There are far more sensible ways to account for the facts we know about Alastor’s life: it is not unusual that a man who spent decades battling dark wizards should lose an eye, just as it is entirely reasonable for him to develop paranoia. There is an old Muggle idiom that “it’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you”, and Moody’s unfortunate run-in with Barty Crouch Junior in 1994 has proved that paranoid may not have even been the best word to describe him after all. I have even heard it said by some that the story may well have been first circulated by Alastor himself, building a reputation around himself to make prospective evildoers fear any encounter they would have against him. “Dark wizards,” Moody told me once, “are a superstitious, cowardly lot” – words that have stuck with me ever since. Did he create his own myth as a shield charm, to better be able to hunt down evildoers and strike fear into their hearts?

But I will confess that there are times I think better of this theory. I have memories of days towards the end of his life. I would see him, one eyed, leaning on his staff, a shock of greying hair around his head. Perhaps he would reach out a fist for his great black owl to land on, and I would think of the mythical Odin and his ravens. I do not consider myself a credulous man, but I think it is worth dwelling on – if anyone were to break into the Hemmelighetsbyrå, if anyone were to hang themselves from Yggdrasil for magical knowledge to better protect his fellow man – I rather believe it would have been Alastor.


End file.
